Digital Nomads: Africans from 30 countries could spend $871 million more to enter the US
Consider a Botswana-based tech consultant who travels to the United States once a year for a client meeting.
Consider a Botswana-based tech consultant who travels to the United States once a year for a client meeting. She holds a B1/B2 visa, the standard route for short-term business travel.
However, Botswana now sits on Washington’s visa bond list, placing a critical condition on her next visa application: before her visa is approved, she must deposit up to $15,000 with the US government.
The money is refundable, eventually, but it sits frozen for the duration of her stay, earning nothing, while she still sorts visa fees, flight, and accommodation costs.
That financial burden is now spreading across the continent.
On April 2, the US expanded its visa bond policy. Six more African countries—Mauritius, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Seychelles, and Tunisia—were added to the United States’ visa bond programme, joining 24 other African nations whose citizens must now pay thousands of dollars upfront before entering the US for short-term travel.
The visa bond requirement now applies to 50 countries globally, 30 of them in Africa, according to the US State Department. That means 60% of the nationalities subject to the US visa bond policy are African.
The policy affects travellers applying for B1/B2 visas, the category used for business trips, tourism, conferences, medical visits, and family travel.
Under the rule, applicants from the affected countries are required to post a refundable bond of $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000 after their visa interview and before receiving approval.
For travellers from most of the 30 affected African countries, the restrictions compound further. B-class visas, consisting of B1, B2, and B1/B2 visas, are now issued as single-entry permits valid for as little as three months. Each new trip means a fresh application, a fresh interview, and potentially a fresh bond deposit.
How long is a US B1/B2 visa actually valid? For the vast majority of African nations, it’s just 3 months and a single trip. Search or filter below to see the disparities.
The Travel Tax on Innovation. While US policymakers tout global connectivity, the administrative reality for African builders is highly restrictive. Out of 30 countries analyzed, 24—including massive tech ecosystems like Nigeria and Senegal—are subjected to a 3-month, single-entry visa. This means founders seeking to attend accelerators, pitch investors, or build global partnerships must constantly reapply and face massive backlog wait times for every single trip after the 3-month validity. Only four countries (Lesotho, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Tunisia) enjoy the 120-month (10-year) multiple-entry privilege. Even exceptional 24-month approvals for Ethiopian travellers require a high-level sign-off from the VO DAS (Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services).
To secure the visa, applicants must file a Department of Homeland Security Form I-352 and deposit the bond amount with the US government.
The money is refunded only if the traveller leaves the US within the authorised stay period, never uses the visa before expiry, or is denied entry at a US port after arrival.
The US State Department said the programme is designed to reduce visa overstays. In reality, it creates one of the steepest financial barriers to mobility facing African travellers today.
An analysis of the US Department of State visa issuance data shows that 522,721 people from the 30 affected African countries received B1/B2 visas between the 2022 and 2024 fiscal years. That translates to an annual average of about 174,240 travellers.
Are you travelling to pitch a startup (B-1) or take a vacation (B-2)? To the US government, it doesn’t matter. Out of 522,721 total visas issued over the last three years across these 30 countries, pure business and tourism visas make up less than half a percent.
Ecosystem friction isn’t categorised. When a founder travels to raise capital, they are thrown into the exact same administrative bucket and backlog as a family going to Disney World. The issuance of pure B-1 (Business) visas is virtually non-existent (falling from an already low 490 in FY22 to just 470 in FY24). For the African tech ecosystem, this means “business travel” isn’t treated with any dedicated urgency by US immigration systems; it is merely an subset of general visitor processing.
If every traveller from those affected countries is required to post the minimum $5,000 bond, Africans would collectively need to lock up an additional $871.2 million every year just to enter the US.
At the highest bond tier of $15,000, that figure climbs to $2.6 billion annually.
Those figures exclude visa fees, interview costs, document processing charges, travel expenses, and legal services that already make US travel among the most expensive visa processes globally.
Several of the 30 affected African countries already carry some of the world’s weakest passports.
Namibia, Lesotho, Cabo Verde, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Sao Tome and Principe, Togo, Malawi, Tanzania, The Gambia, Tunisia, Benin, Uganda, Mozambique, Senegal, Algeria, and Mauritania rank between 60 and 80 on the Henley Passport Index, which measures global passport strength using data from the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) travel database.
Nigeria, ranked 90th, is one of the lowest-ranked passports in Africa. Ethiopia ranks even lower, according to the index.
How much of the world can you access without a prior visa? Search the complete Henley Passport Index rankings below to compare border access across the globe.
The Passport Penalty. The Henley Passport Index ranks passports according to the number of destinations holders can access without a prior visa. While Singapore commands the top spot with access to 192 destinations, and European countries dominate the top 10, African builders face a massive structural disadvantage. South Africa holds rank 47 (100 destinations), while major tech hubs lag far behind: Kenya at 66 (69 destinations), and Nigeria all the way down at rank 90 (44 destinations). This global mobility gap remains one of the largest silent taxes on African innovation.
The visa bond system increases the financial barrier for passport holders, especially Nigerians, who are already among the most scrutinised travellers in the world.
For many applicants from countries such as Nigeria, Ethiopia, and even Mauritius, one of the continent’s wealthiest countries per capita, the bond exceeds annual income at minimum wage.
Nigeria, which recorded the largest volume of B1/B2 visa issuances among affected African countries, illustrates the scale of the policy.
Between 2022 and 2024 fiscal years, Nigerians received 238,732 B1/B2 visas, nearly 46% of all visas issued to the 30 African countries combined, according to data from the US Department of State.
Ethiopia followed with 53,134 visas issued over the same period, while Algeria recorded 52,285.
